The Maine Senate distinguished itself Saturday by giving bipartisan support to a bill that brings much-needed public oversight to the use of public bonds that finance student loans. The House can do the same today — if it can see through offensive and misleading opposition fog.

The Senate bill, sponsored by Sen. Carol Kontos, breaks up the virtual monopoly the private non-profit Maine Education Services has enjoyed in the student loan business by severing the exclusive ties MES has had with the two state-created agencies with access to the tax-free bonds issued by the state. The Kontos bill ends the unacceptable control MES has had over those agencies, the Maine Educational Loan Marketing Corp. (MELMAC) and the Maine Educational Loan Authority (MELA), it opens the proceedings of those agencies to the public, it closes a loophole that gave MELMAC an unfair and legally dubious advantage over commercial banks, it requires that a majority of the MELMAC board be appointed by the governor and the Legislature and accountable to the public.

Most importantly, the Kontos bill gives Maine citizens the long-overdue opportunity to find out if the portion of Maine’s tax-exempt bonds used for student loans — a valuable, limited public resource — is being used to truly make college more affordable, or if the bonds are going to bankroll MES’s high salaries, plush offices and for-profit spin-offs. The most appalling thing about the long struggle of Sen. Kontos and others, including State Treasurer Dale McCormick, to determine whether the savings from the tax-exempt bonds are passed along to students is how stingy MES has been with the relevant information.

The second most appalling thing is the furious campaign MES has mounted against the Kontos bill in general and the personal attacks against the sponsor and Treasurer McCormick in particular. The gist of which, through ads and mailings, is that legislators have some perverse interest in “politicizing” the student-loan process, in creating a sprawling new bureaucracy and, most of all, in keeping Maine kids from going to college.

Odd, unsupported, obfuscating charges, considering that it is the MES/MELMAC/MELA triad, with boards and staff laden with former governors and former and even current legislators, that has done the politicizing, that has been far murkier and secretive than any government bureaucracy ever could, that has failed to demonstrate any real benefits to students. The Senate recognized the fog for what it is. So should the House.